User:Snekha.G/Myra Hindley

Myra Hindley was born on 23 July 1942 in Crumpsall, a suburb in Manchester. Early Life For the most part, Myra grew up with her grandmother. Her father was away for the first three years of her childhood because of the Second World War. When he returned, he was forced to take up menial labour work to support his family. Soon he started drinking heavily and physically abusing Myra, and her mother. Myra was then sent to live with her grandmother, when she was around five years old. Due to the circumstances at home, Myra learned to fight back from a very young age. She was involved in a street fight, where she beat a boy. This caught her father’s attention and approval. Myra attended communion lessons at the local Catholic Church. She was very keen in reading books and her friends would often say that Myra had no empathy for anybody else. Myra liked to go swimming with one of her few male friends, Michael Higgins. Sadly, when Myra didn’t accompany her friend, he drowned. However, when his body was laid out, she was eerily fascinated. Soon after his death, she converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1961, she met Ian Brady, a stock clerk who was recently released from prison. She fell in love with him, and soon gave herself over to his total control. Murders Brady would frequently hatch plans of rape and murder specifically to test the strength of Myra’s blind allegiance to him. Together, in July 1963,they claimed their first victim, Pauline Reade. Four months later, 12-year-old John Kilbride disappeared, never to be seen again. In June 1964, 12-year-old Keith Bennett followed. On the afternoon of Boxing Day, 1964, 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey disappeared from a local fairground. In October 1965, David Smith, Myra’s brother-in-law, witnessed the duo killing 17-year-old Edward Evans with an axe, and alerted the police. Hindley and Ian Brady were brought to trial on April 27, 1966, where they pleaded not guilty to the murders of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey, and John Kilbride. Brady was found guilty of the murders of Lesley Ann Downey, John Kilbride, and Edward Evans, while Hindley was found guilty of the murders of Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, and also for harboring Brady, in the knowledge that he had killed John Kilbride. They were both jailed for life. In 1987, Myra publicly released a full confession about her involvement in all the five murders. She died on November 16, 2002 of a respiratory failure.

References Benfield, A. (1968). The moors murders. The Police Journal, 41(4), 147-159. Harrison, F. (2016). Brady and Hindley: Genesis of the moors murders. Open Road Media. Rafferty, J. (2012). Myra, Beyond Saddleworth (Doctoral dissertation, University of Strathclyde).